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Your Next Online Order Could Be Delivered To Your Car's Trunk
cartechboy writes "It's amazing how far we've come with technology. Now many of us have the ability to work remotely, and we can even lock/unlock our vehicles via the Internet. And yet, the way we receive our packages from FedEx, UPS, and USPS hasn't really changed. But Volvo thinks it has a way to revolutionize package delivery with Roam Delivery: instead of having packages delivered to your house or office, you could have packages dropped off in the trunk of your car. Volvo says this would work via its new digital keys technology which would allow customers to choose their car as a delivery option when ordering goods online. Via a smartphone or tablet, the owner would be informed when a delivery requires dropping off or picking up from the car. Accepting the delivery will enable a digital key which tracks when the car is opened, and then when it's locked again. The digital key expires once the delivery is complete. Not only does this sound pretty slick, but the technology to make it happen is pretty simple. Now the only question is whether you really want your Amazon box being delivered to your vehicle."
You end up with a nice large expensive thing sitting on top of your car until you get there to deal with it.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
In Soviet Russia, someone could order you to be delivered in the trunk of a car.
UPS/FedEx/USPS have efficient routing because your house doesn't move. They can plan the best way to get from the warehouse/depot to a set of locations throughout the day. I think this is akin to the traveling salesman problem...
Now, if you have it delivered to your car, which is mobile, how are they supposed to coordinate this? If the truck leaves the depot at 7am, and my car is detected at my house, the truck has a route optimized for delivery to my house. If I go to the grocery store at 9am, does the truck re-reroute to the grocery store and then if I go to the bank 30min later re-route again?
Doubt it.
This might work if you tell them that your car will be in a fixed location throughout the day. But I'm not sure that civilian GPS is sensitive enough to tell the driver where your car is when it's in a parking lot with 500 other cars.
"Silkroad."
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
This seems like a good idea at first, but I don't think it'll fit well within the current delivery system. Packages tend to make it to your local (town) sorting facility the day before you get them... so you'll have to know where your car will be at least a day before your package get's delivered? Cars have a bad habit of moving between towns, would your package be routed to a new sorting facility or would the delivery truck try to chase you down?
This seems like a solution in search of a problem.
If my car is at home, the package can be delivered to my home. If my car is at work, the package can be delivered to my work. And if my employer objects, I imagine they would also object to packages being delivered to the trunk of my on-premises vehicle.
And actually, most of the time when I'm at work, my car is parked near where I catch the train. But I'm sure no one with a crowbar would EVER consider keeping an eye on places where many unattended cars are left every day...
#DeleteChrome
While this sounds like a fantastic idea in theory, has anyone thought about the privacy and security problems with someone knowing the location of your car and tracking your whereabouts? Suppose that these were not issues, how would the logistics work about routes? UPS and FedEx devote enormous amounts of computing power to figure out the optimal route. How is that going to work with moving delivery locations?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Dispose of hooker's body before UPS drops off wife's birthday gift.
Have gnu, will travel.
If my car is home, I might as well have it delivered to my house. I work where you need an ID to get into the parking lot, so that's out. I'm usually not anywhere else long enough to get packages (has mental image of a delivery vehicle chasing my car down the highway).
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I probably just haven't heard of this idea before. But there are very few ideas that are this innovative. Yes, I'll have to commit to having my car in the parking lot at 101 North Main Street from 9 to 5 on a particular day, but it's there every weekday anyhow. And why just UPS/etc? I can give one-time keys to anyone I choose. The Feds will hate this because a mobile lockbox will be so much harder to investigate, right up to the day when they learn how to crack it (or are given a back door). Then they'll love it. However, it'll make framing people a lot easier, too. I suspect there'll be a lookup table specifying, by car model, how large a parcel one can receive.
After reading TFA, I wondered why this hadn't already been done on a large scale. After all, for the most part, the hardware is already in place. It's just a software/process problem. But then I read a few of the comments here, and realized that it hadn't already been done because many lack the imagination to see how well this is going to work. "Just have it delivered to your house"??? So it's either stolen or sits outside in the rain all day. Nice. "Just have it delivered to your office"??? Are you sure it comes in a plain brown wrapper? The only serious downside I read was that cars in unattended areas might be subject to break-in after deliveries are observed. Which brings me to the other piece of hardware I'd want—a camera in the trunk, or even the back window, that records events leading up to the trunk being opened and closed and immediately saves those in a hardened place or sends them somewhere else. Also, the camera may make it unnecessary to empty the trunk ahead of time, as the UPS man would be recorded not stealing the stuff that was already in there because he's either honest or knows he'll be watched.
I do think that for the most part, deliverers will have to know the car's delivery-day (or pickup-day) general location at least a day ahead of delivery-day (pickup-day) so as to optimize their travel.
If I'm the deliverer, I want the trunk to pop open completely before I'm standing in front of it to avoid nasty surprises left for me.
If all else fails, use the trunk monkey.
What will this lead to? Commonly used outdoor-access closets/boxes with Internet-connected electronic locks for parcel delivery/pickup at home. I'm already planning to add one. I'm pretty sure they already exist, but I've yet to see one.
The whole point of locking my car, and my trunk, is to prevent access to it. I have zero interest is some skeezy delivery man opening my trunk. Forget about my sensitive business documents, and my expensive roadside safety equipment, what I really don't want the delivery guy to see is the package from the previous delivery guy.
Quite frankly, I'd prefer to give him a key to my house -- at least then he doesn't need to re-organize my stuff to make room.
Of course, it'd be a lot easier to give him the key to the tool shed in my backyard.
But easier than all of that is what I do right now -- leave it with the neighbour.
And finally, the best option of all, just leave it at the front door. It's a safe neighbourhood. If it weren't, I wouldn't have chosen to spend hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep all of my stuff there.
I found an exploit and it only took me 3 seconds. Someone orders you a package, pretends to be you the second it gets delivered, leaves the trunk open, steals the package and the car by climbing in.